Josephine Lethbridge

Interdisciplinary Editor at The Conversation

APRIL 2017 –

From April 2017, Josephine Lethbridge will be The Conversation’s Interdisciplinary Editor, funded by the ISRF. Josephine’s role will include working with scholars at The Conversation’s member universities, as well as past and present Fellows of the ISRF, to bring interdisciplinary social research to millions of readers worldwide. Josephine will encourage researchers to write short newsworthy articles, working with them to produce pieces with journalistic flair but no loss of academic rigour. The ISRF hope that, by promoting interdisciplinarity through this partnership with The Conversation, the usefulness of interdisciplinary approaches will reach broader audiences, and that knowledge of such work will spread beyond the confines of academia.

‘ECONOMICS &…’ WORKSHOP SERIES

Goldsmiths, University of London

MAY 2017 –

Beginning with a two day workshop – Economics and Anthropology – in January 2018, the ISRF intends to support a series of annual workshops with the aim of bringing economists and other social scientists, to facilitate new conversations and the development of common vocabularies.

This workshop aimed to explore key interfaces between economics and anthropology. It included four sessions, on the themes of production and work, industrialization and development, credit and debt, and economic action. More Info

Goldsmiths, University of London

JULY 2016 – JANUARY 2018

A pilot project – led by Dr Ivano Cardinale & Dr Constantinos Repapis, with technical support from Dr Ricardo Leizaola – which aimed to investigate how one might re-orient economics, featuring interviews with celebrated economists who have articulated a clear view of what is wrong with the subject and how we can change it. The basic outcome of this project was to provide non-technical and easy access material to students and the wider public that are interested in discourses of the economy which we find to have merit but are marginalised in the current public discussion.

CRASSH, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

SEPTEMBER 2015 – AUGUST 2018

This Limits of the Numerical project explores one of the most pressing sets of questions for modern social science and its relation to policy. What are the effects on a system of social policy when numerical quantification and evaluation is introduced into that system? How does the use of numerical evaluation exclude, trivialize or distort other systems of political, moral and social evaluation? What are the political and moral consequences of this shift towards numerical evaluation? These questions are addressed with respect to three distinct strands of social policy — education, climate change and healthcare — three areas where social science, policy and the gritty world of politics interact with intense urgency.

MAPPING ECONOMICS IN FRANCE

INSTITUT DES SYSTÈMES COMPLEXES, PARIS ILE-DE-FRANCE (ISC-PIF)

JANUARY 2018 –

The research project contributes to the ISRF’s programme: ‘Reframing the moral foundations of economics’, which responded to the displacement of a social science discipline of economics (Political Economy) by a ‘scientised’ quantification of economic activity. The project’s overall goal is a generally applicable analysis of the relational structures and the normative controversies existing among contemporary economists, to understand how far these determine both the nature of academic economics and economic policy.

Previous ISRF-Funded Projects

Centre for Social Ontology - EPFL

Centre for Social Ontology

The Centre for Social Ontology was based in the College of Humanities at EPFL, its central focus being the Morphogenetic Project. The project’s main theoretical aim was to conceptualize a nascent but unique transformation of the social order towards ‘Morphogenesis Unbound’.

Margaret Archer

FROM MODERNITY TO THE MORPHOGENIC SOCIETY

Ismael Al-Amoudi

AUTHORITY AND NORMATIVITY IN A MORPHOGENETIC WORLD

Kate Forbes-Pitt

AGENCY AND THE TECHNOLOGY OF THE 21ST CENTURY

Centre for Social Ontology - University of Warwick

UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK | JANUARY 2014 – DECEMBER 2016

The Centre for Social Ontology (CSO) was established in 2011 at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where Professor Margaret Archer was ISRF Chair in Social Theory 2011-2013. Following a move to the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick, its main focus was the Morphogenetic Project.

Digital Social Science Forum

DIGITAL SOCIAL SCIENCE FORUM

2015-16

The Digital Social Science Forum brought together innovative figures, working at the cutting edge of research in their own fields, in order to develop an interdisciplinary space within which the Digital Social Sciences could thrive.

Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory is an international peer-reviewed, open-access journal which aims to situate ethnography as the prime heuristic of anthropology, and return it to the forefront of conceptual developments in the discipline.

Professorial Research Fellowship - University of Cambridge

Professorial Research Fellowship

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE | OCTOBER 2011 – SEPTEMBER 2014

The research programme was intended to generate a book and papers on a range of topics as well as to support participation in workshops and networks.

Tony Lawson

PROFESSORIAL RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP - UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Revisiting the Unconscious Defences Against Anxiety Thesis

PSYCHOANALYSIS OF ORGANISATIONS WORKSHOP

ST JOHN’S COLLEGE, OXFORD | 16-17 SEPTEMBER 2013

The workshop was jointly organised by Professor Paul Tod, Tutorial Fellow in Mathematics; Dr Louise Braddock of Girton College, Cambridge and the Independent Social Research Foundation; Dr David Armstrong, Principal Consultant at Tavistock Consulting, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust; and Professor Michael Rustin, Professor of Sociology at the University of East London, Visiting Professor at the Tavistock Clinic, and Associate of the British Psychoanalytic Society.

UCL Institute of Education

11-12 November 2016

“Over the course of this conference we will explore the presence of psychoanalysis within the history of sociology, reflect on earlier attempts to bring about the much delayed rapprochement between the disciplines, investigate the continued ‘application’ of psychoanalysis within the field of sociological enquiry, and consider what the two disciplines might learn from each other today. How does psychoanalysis, attending to the unconscious fantasy life of the individual, move beyond the realm of private interests? Conversely, how does sociology reflect on the operation of the unconscious? What forms of psychoanalysis are sustainable in different socio-political climates? And how can a psychoanalytic sociology enhance our understanding of contemporary society.

Bringing together international scholars and practioners of sociology and psychoanalysis, our goal will be to explore the terms of a future psychoanalytic sociology and sociologically informed psychoanalysis.”

Keynote Speaker: Professor Jessica Benjamin, New York University

Location: Institute of Education, University College London (20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL)